How AI Is Changing Retail, Style, and the Future of Shopping | Anya Cheng

0:00Menards is your one-stop shop for all your summer essentials. Whether you're stocking up on everyone's favorite snacks, making a patio perfect for entertaining family and friends, or getting ready to gather around the grill, Menards has everything you need for your get-togethers all summer long. Save big money now at Menards. Plus, don't forget to check out our weekly flyer on menards.com for all the great deals happening now. Save big money at Menards. We have those unique data. We put it together and we buy two companies their styling information from their 10 years operations. Then we layer on top of large language model.

0:40As they grow, we also grow, but we always one step ahead. If you are a small business or starting a company, now is your time because building AI is easy. All you need is unique defensive data. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford. What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're here to help you get right now. Hey, we can talk about what you should have done. We can talk about what you should do. We need to talk about right now.

1:24You know what's right now? It's AI. It's lots of it. It's every day. It's in front of us. But ultimately, hey, I like to look good. It's my style, my image. That's why I go straight to the source. It is Anya Chang. She is the founder and CEO of Taylor. She's making everybody look good. What's up, Anya? Hello, this is Anya from Taylor AI. We use AI to pick clothes for you. In the past, only celebrity has human stylists. Nowadays, with AI, everybody has your personal stylist in your fingertips. But in addition, we send people real clothes for you to wear for a couple of days, a couple of weeks. No more shopping, no more laundry.

1:57After this, it's a rental service. Before starting a company, I helped build Facebook, Instagram, shopping for Meta, had a product for eBay, also senior director at McDonald's, run their food delivery business. When you are ordering McDonald's from your phone, that was my product, and helped Target to build their tech office here in Silicon Valley. Excited to be here today. You really are 40 under 40. I tell you what, girls in tech, 40 under 40, she's got it going on. You've been around the block. That's right. I'm also teaching at Northwestern University. I teach marketing and product management there.

2:27So excited to share some examples and case studies. Anya, I want to talk mainly in our short time together about what you're doing with Taylor, how you've grown that business, the future of all AI is related to your business. But let's at least, because you do have an impressive background, you've worked Facebook, you just named the who's who of some tech brands and otherwise. What's the one thing that our audience could know about you and what you learned working at some of those giants and maybe one of the biggest takeaways that then led you to your own path? The reason that I started a company was that when I was working for big tech companies before, as a female leaders for a big tech company, I came from data scientists and marketing background, but I did do large technology teams.

3:08So I always feel a little bit in positive syndrome. Am I ready for the day? I'm sure many people like me who have a dream feel that sometimes. I start feeling like maybe at least I need to look great, dressed up, looks presentable. When I'm freaking out, nobody will find out. I started using some subscription boxes like Stitch Fix and some other subscription boxes out there, but you all have to buy. They do style you, but once they send you the box, within a few days, you have to decide if you're going to buy. It's almost like Netflix show versus buying a DVD of Home Alone. If you're watching a Netflix show, you don't have to decide, right?

3:43You watch for three minutes, you don't like it, move on, who cares? It's subscription, tons of options out there. First, buy a DVD, you have to read it short. And I didn't like the pressure of a commitment. I started renting clothes, a company like Newly, 500 million revenue in just five years, backed by Urban Outfitters, Rent the Runway or More, lots of women's rental company. All of them required me to pick hundreds of thousands of garments, pick, pick, pick, spend two hours. And it was a hard moment for me that I realized I do not like browsing and shopping and I don't know fashion. I don't have strong fashion sense.

4:19I don't know what to pick. And most of fashion companies seems to have the design for people who are into fashion, not for people like me, just want to get ready for the day and be successful. And that's what Taylor was for. But for your questions on what did I learn from big tech company that ended up applied here? One thing that I learned really important in big tech company is always focus on finding the right problem versus only focus on figuring out the solution. Because when you are fixing a wrong problem, no matter how great your solution is, it's going to be wrong. For example, when a target, they thought of the one problem, which is mom, when they go to store, sometimes they forget one thing.

4:55Yes. How about we build something called shopping list? You list the shopping list, you go to the store, the app becomes an in-store GPS. Turn right, turn left, never forget one thing from the store. The launcher feature spends six months lots of money geofencing all of the products in the locations in different stores. Eventually, nobody used it. Why? Moms, they are going to a store to get lost. They like to wander around the store and they have been in store for 10 years. They said they get away from their noisy kids. They want to be lost in the store so they can buy something and spend time in their me time.

5:28Solving the right problem is extremely important. And that's why we found that these busy men who are not into fashion, but single guy, salespeople, recruiter, faster professor, really don't care about fashion, but need to look good. And we are solving the problem to help them to be more successful. Smart. Got to solve the right problem. It starts there. So there's one thing I've learned running multiple businesses. It's how fast things fall apart when communication gets messy. Missed calls, scattered text threads, team members not seeing the same conversation. That stuff quietly costs you time and revenue.

6:03That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the smarter way to run your business communications. It gives my team one shared business number so everyone sees the full conversation. Calls, texts, voicemails all in one place. No more who talked to this customer. Replies are faster, handoffs are smoother, and customers actually feel taken care of. We realized that at my new card shop collector station. Between customers calling about card inventory, grading submissions, trade offers, and even trade nights, things were moving fast. And when communication wasn't centralized, things got messy quick.

6:43I also like that it works wherever I am. Phone, laptop, doesn't matter. I kept my existing number, added teammates in just minutes, and everything lives in one clean view. And their AI automatically logs calls and pulls out next steps. Make this the season where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash Ryan. That's Quo.com slash Ryan. That's Q-U-O.com slash Ryan. Quo. No missed calls, no missed opportunities. Starting something new isn't just exciting. It's honestly a little terrifying. I remember right before I launched my podcast, all those what-if thoughts creeping in.

7:31But looking back, taking that leap was one of the best decisions I've made. And I'll tell you, if your systems are clunky, everything slows down. If things are smooth, you actually keep moving. That's why having the right platform behind you makes such a big difference. For a lot of founders and entrepreneurs, that platform is Shopify. From massive brands to people just getting started, they make it easier to go from idea to real business. You get hundreds of ready-to-use templates, design a store that actually looks like your brand. You get AI tools that help write product descriptions, page headlines, even clean up product photos, which saves founders a ton of time.

8:09And once you're live, Shopify handles the hard stuff. Inventory, payments, shipping, returns, all one dashboard. Instead of bouncing between different platforms, everything's just in one place, which honestly saves us a ton of time. And that's the part people don't always see. It's not just about building a website. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify. And start hearing... Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash Ryan. That's Shopify.com slash R-Y-A-N.

8:51Anya, before I turn a little bit more to Taylor and some of the specific, you got things you guys are doing with AI. One question for someone as astute as yourself on the marketing side, we're in this world now, and obviously sales is everything for a company. Where do you fall on the performance marketing versus branding? Do people care about brands anymore? Is it just about, hey, you solved my problem. You got a product. Boom. Don't really care about the brand. For For someone like yourself that's in tech, I can easily see you falling into solution sale. Does brand still have a place? Yeah, I truly believe so.

9:24Example was my old company, Sears. Sears, when we were at Sears, Kmart, our website actually faster than Amazon. The feature, the performance, every single website content 10 years ago is actually personalized. Not everybody see the same website. Not everybody see the same email. Not everybody see the same ad. 15, 15 years ago. Sears was more cutting edge than eBay. Most people don't believe so, but Quan Hain, when I joined eBay, I realized so. It's so true. However, people don't like the brand. They never really attach to it somehow. It's the great, amazing website with some product. But then when you don't have a brand, people don't have relevancy to you, right?

10:06So for example, what we found that in our model, people are not really just buying clothes. They are buying the chance to succeed. When we say, man, we're rental subscription. Nobody cares. But when I say, hey, I can help you to dress up for your day and night, which you don't have to worry about your day and night. Just focus on a conversation. People buy the service. People use their service. And I can tell you at Meta, at one point, they actually do blind testing. They sell the glasses. And at one point, they just put down the hide glasses. They put like Oculus versus some other brands on, Apples and some others.

10:41We see people actually choose differently. I do think that both are equally important. We know the marketing funnel. If you don't have a consideration, there's no performance marketing needed. However, it's also if you only have branding, but you don't have performance marketing, you can never convert those awareness and consideration. We recently won the American Marketing Association Award of Excellence in Marketing by doing very well on ChatGPT. Nowadays, people say performance marketing more and more get into like ChatGPT SEO versus Google SEO because more people are asking questions there.

11:12How we do it is that we use human and machines in a loop and exercise. We start with identifying the user journey, why people search for something, even on ChatGPT. Identify the question people will ask. We have human to write down the overall outline. We use AI to generate content. From there, our human stylists revising the content with their point of view. And then when we send the customer's outfit with a styling note, customer provide feedback, put your feedback into the notes with the content. and then those content generating to automatically to the website, which will get more traffic coming in from Chagipity and as regular SEO.

11:50And it become an automated flywheel. So then we won the award. We got 10 ,000 impressions for free from there. But I truly still believe brand is important. So does the performance marketing. Woman after my own heart talking about the purchase funnel here. I love talking about purchase funnel. You got awareness, consideration, intent, and then you got to make a purchase. Yo, man, heart beating. I'm a marketer at heart, Anya. I will say it's really smart what you're doing because people are moving from SEO. Hey, all about all this list. No, just give me the answer. It's about answers, about solving the problem.

12:22It does lead to a fascinating discussion is when there's only one answer, what happens to SEO? We'll let someone else smarter than me solve that one. Anya, you just talked a little bit of how you're using AI. It's been at the core of the business, I take it, since day one from what I heard and what you described. What's been the biggest learning lesson being on this cutting edge of AI? Era of AI is very different from the era of algorithm. If you look at last generation, Google is a black box of algorithm. What's rent high is important. But nowadays, unless you are Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, otherwise most of you are going to use open AI to Chachipiti's parent companies or Elon Musk's AI or Google's AI, etc.

13:04So nobody is going to build your own algorithm. means what? Means data is way more valuable nowadays. Building AI is easy. It's like building a website. 20 years ago, you need a whole bunch of engineers. Nowadays, you need$10 on Shopify, you're done. Nowadays, the key thing is you have your unique data. So you can bring your data later on top of whatever large language model that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg built. At Taylor, we know customers' true preference. Why? If you go to a store, Macy's, Nordstrom, or Amazon, you buy your spy, don't buy something, largely because of price. Your decision is polluted by the price.

13:45But when you watch your Netflix show, the show is not on discount. You watch which show is you truly like it. The same thing for our membership model. We pay people, pay$100 per month. Whatever the clothes they pick along with our AI, our AI actually pick for them. But when they work together on deciding that, it's what they truly like. We also get feedback every other week because the customer wanting to make sure the next shipment is better. Versus in the past, when I'm working for Target or eBay, people never give feedback unless it's one star and they're so pissed off about that, right? And we also know future.

14:18AI don't know the future. AI know the past. But we are working with 300 fashion brands. They are designing something for the future. Next year's trend. What's the next year's color? They are designing that. They are deciding that. And we also have human stylists. They have know-how. Why you don't just search? Why celebrities still use human stylists? Because they are still better. We have those unique data. We put it together and we buy two companies their styling information from their 10 years operations. Then we layer on top of large language models. As they grow, we also grow, but we always one step ahead.

14:51If you are a small business or starting a company, now is your time because building AI is easy. All you need is unique defensive data. For example, my friend is a doctor. He's a dentist. All he does is you just have one practice for 15 years. But he has those images for 15 years with different teeth issues. So now he's building his AI to detect teeth issues because he has those images, those unique data that no one else has. Think about that. And then for your previous questions on the SEO for ChatGPT, one thing you should know is that in the past for Google, they only considered structured data, means copies.

15:31Right. Remember an image like Google doesn't read Ryan's image, but we have to write Ryan right about now show behind the image so that Google can read. However, nowadays, AI, they read both. They read image, they read videos, they read both. Multimedia become a lot more important. User generate content become a lot more important. And that's the difference between SEO nowadays on Chagip versus before. that's good hey that means i'm out there man i got thousands of episodes and highlight clips and smart people like anya coming on the show telling us all the good stuff hey we're covered on you we're good exactly walk me through i'm a busy executive my wardrobe sucks not mine mine's stylish because i got things like taylor and other things that i use but talk to me what that process looks like yeah all the customers they signed up just like a netflix show they signed up for a membership$79 or$98, however program they pick.

16:30So then they can't get to wear like 10 clothes per month, for example. So they start with a simple style quiz. How our AI know about you? We ask you some questions. We do ask you your high-end weight, which we don't always use because a lot of customers, they think they are taller and thinner. They will put, I am definitely size medium. No, no, no. Go to your closet, pick your favorite outfit. Oh my God, when did I become a size It's ultra large. Yes, you are. Hey, I'm 6 '5", 265. So believe me, I know. No mediums in the closet for me. We do also ask them to go to their closet and look at their favorite outfit.

17:09What size is it? And then most important question we ask is your purpose. Because our customers, they don't care about looking good. They care about looking good so that they get a job, get a day, a close deal, order a show. Number one, every single day. They want to get 5 million followers, like following and traffic every single episode. That's why they care. They care about success. No matter what's their definition of success. Some people's success means more time with their kids so then they don't need to worry about their farmer's market outfit. Some people's success means they close a deal, want a$10 million deal with this new client.

17:44Our job is to make sure we dress up to success, to project the best image that you want. And then from there, we ask you to upload a few pictures. you like this like certain item and if you like we get a 15-minute consultation call with human stylist our human stylist get on zoom call and then we'll talk with you you can show the closet your body or whatever you want to show from there we send you the first shipment seven item for example you're already mis-matched to multiple outfits that fit with your upcoming schedule and then from there if you wear after you wear for whole weeks if you're traveling Give it back to the hotel lobby with the return envelope that's prepaid.

18:24You go home without doing any laundry. When you get home, the next day, the new clothes has arrived. So no more shopping, no more laundry. Like your Netflix show, subscribe. You can watch a lot of things. So you get to try it. You don't have to buy it. And you get to trade in and out the clothes that you want. And do you get the option to keep it or is it just renting no matter what? You get the option to keep it. And the good thing is that for most of the busy men, they never go to a trash store. So we all know sustainability, buying second-hand grades and etc. But nobody has those times. So in this model, after you wear it for a few weeks, usually it's quite on discount, 10%, 20%, 50%, 70 % off.

19:05So then most people just buy it. It looks like still very new, just like your airport rental car. They tend to be very, very new. Average renting three times is already so. and we partnered with over 100 brands, Marine Layer, Johnson & Murphy, Bonobos, all kinds of brands, you name it, for both the most famous American brands, but also we source globally, best brand in Italy, best brand in Netherlands, in UK, in Japan. So you get those amazing brands, come here and then you can try. I can tell you most of our customers think, I will never wear pink. And our stylist, how about this? I give you a bonus item for free.

19:42Try this one. And they were like, okay, this is great. can I buy two of that? So many of us never know our true style because we have been wearing the same thing again and again in the last 10 years. Hey, real men wear pink. I like it. I love this because you get to try stuff. You just hit the nail on the head. You try stuff that maybe you wouldn't feel comfortable buying and you know you're not stuck if you don't like it. But a lot of times it forces you into trying something a little different and you can sample it. And then And you get to at least expand your horizons of what you might wear.

20:16I'm a black t-shirt guy. I come back to the black v-neck a lot. But I've had to expand the palette. My wife's like, all right, black v-necks. It's time to take a little break. And you got to have a little splash of color. That's right. Most of them, they don't. We ask, what color do you usually wear? Blue. Everybody is blue. And the good thing is you don't have to know. Our human stylists without AI will pair for you. We even tell you, okay, what shoes you should pair with? It's what belts you should pair with. And that's where we are expanding into as well. Our customer users are more like executive assistant, concierge service, or more like the gadget guy behind superhero in those movies.

20:53So you ask questions about branding and what we are really selling. I think we are not really just selling clothes. We are selling the peace of mind, the convenience, the chance to succeed. And that's what our customers are really buying for. That makes a lot of sense. What about like, okay, tuxedos or... Or because I think sometimes you think of rentals and you think of suits or something. Is this a service to use for those types of single one-off events? No, not at all. Our customers, we don't have suits. We don't have tuxedos because most people don't wear them nowadays. We have blazers, sport coats.

21:24We have t-shirts, hooties, sweaters, and all kinds of things for everyday wear. Our mission is to help people get ready for their days. So our customer uses more like your Netflix show. In the old time, you buy the DVD once a year, like, okay, holiday, we will do this. But nowadays, you open your Netflix show, you become everyday. In the old time, you only rent a car once a year when you go on a road trip with your family. Nowadays, you open Ubers and live, you're renting a car every single day. So the sheer economy is getting a lot more getting into everyday life. And also, we partner with fashion brands from all over the world.

22:01So instead of burning those inventory, today, 30 % of clothes go directly from factory to landfill, generating 10 % of carbon emissions, 20 % of polluted water. Fashion is the most polluted industry in the world. Instead of burning those inventory, we also help them to find a new outlet. And also a lot of brands send us their latest collections. Over 100 brands we partner with, a lot of them, they will be sending, testing their latest collections through the platform. Then they get feedback right away. Then they can decide what to produce next year. Our customer, on the one hand, helping to solve the environmental issue.

22:38On the other hand, become the guinea pig to try the latest collections. It's not even out there. Maybe you are wearing the most trendy shirt for next year. Hey, win-win.

22:55Well, to wrap up here, Anya, I got a question for you about a trend that's been taken off, especially in the late States, been overseas a lot more. I just want your perspective. Live shopping. Where does Anya fall on this? Are you a proponent? Do you think this is a trend that's going to expand? I personally do, but I'd love to know someone like yourself, what you think about what's happening in the live shopping space. You're asking the right person because I do live shopping for Meta. So I do live shopping, Instagram, Facebook shopping. I help to build the team. I actually build a live shopping feature for Meta.

23:29I think for sure it's going to expand in. Most people ask me the question differently though. They ask me why it's so slow in the US. As you know, it's been super popular in China, Southeast Asia. Most of the countries, live shopping is their everyday life. And every year I heard VC investors come to me and say, Anya, can you do diligence in this company? We really think that it's going to blow up next year. But then after a few years, still not yet. It's not everywhere yet. I still truly believe it will be very, very popular. But the reason why it hasn't been, I think there's many reasons. Number one, I think in the U.S., we tend to be a little bit more fragmented in terms of platform, like commerce platform or payment platform.

24:13Most people don't feel comfortable giving Facebook your credit card. But in China, Southeast Asia, many of those companies, their platform for payment is exactly the same platform for their e-commerce. That's where they shop, where they do the payment, where they book appointments for doctor appointments. They are super apt as all of those things. While here, we feel like Amazon is Amazon, eBay is eBay, Instagram and Google Maps, they are all separate functions. Customer behavior takes a while on being emerged. The other thing is I think is also because of talents. If you look at those countries that have very strong life shopping, they are engineers.